In the world of medicine, a 3 year project has figured out that doing something simple increases patient health and satisfaction, while having the potential to reduce the annual cost to society for healthcare by billions of dollars. And wonder of wonders, this does not depend on computers, or insurance policies, or politicians of any stripe.

The concept, called Open Notes,[1] is simple - after each visit to the doctor or hospital, the patient is given a copy of what the caregiver wrote in their chart. It is that easy.

Research shows that most patients forget more than three quarters of what the doctor tells them during the visit.[2] And…

According to the CIA, we rank 51st in the world for life expectancy.[1] Citizens of the number one spot for life expectancy, Monaco, live on average 11 years longer than we do! Even worse, University of Wisconsin researchers announced in March that life expectancy is falling in almost half of the counties in our country![2],[3]This has been traced back to obesity.

Being overweight is the single largest cause of diseases that kill people early. One third of our population is obese[4], and another third is overweight (and headed toward obesity).[5] Obesity alone adds almost 200 billion dollars annually to America's direct healthcare costs.[6] In North Carolina, when…

We are a more complex society than most realize - Over 40 languages are routinely spoken in American homes[1]. Almost 7 million Americans speak an Asian language. 35 Million speak Spanish. Almost one million speak Arabic - roughly the same as speak German, and four times more than speak Hebrew.[2] More black Americans attend church regularly than any other subset of our population[3]. Slightly over one quarter of all U.S. citizens saythey are not Christian.[4] Forty percent of all children born today haveunmarried mothers. [5] One in ten is retired, and lives on an averageincome of $14,000 social security income yearly.[6]…

I am often asked how I can be optimistic when I spend so much of my time studying problems facing society. The answer is that no matter how big or scary the problem, I can find someone, someplace, that has figured out a way to solve it in a manner the rest of society can imitate.

1 in 30 United States citizens has been found guilty of breaking some law, and are involved in some way such as probation or parole in our justice system as an offender. At any one time, 1 out of every 100 of our citizens [i] are in behind bars - the highest percentage of any nation in the world.[ii]

And according to the Department of Justice, these people behind bars have children just l…